Word: augustan
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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Arbiter of Dalliance. If Publius Ovidius Naso (i.e., "Big Nose") had any qualms about the decadence of Augustan Rome, it can only be inferred, as in Restoration comedy, from the intensity of his frivolity. "Every age probably regards itself as unique in its sexual sophistication," says Translator Humphries. In a city of such sophisticates, Ovid, whose unlikely origin was the hard, bitter soil of Abruzzi (where he was born 2,000 years ago last month), became the elegant arbiter of sexual dalliance. The Art of Love has no four-letter words, only four-letter situations. Written in a sportively professorial...